For Some Ukrainians, Russian Language Triggers Trauma Response

Putin claimed to have been protecting Russian-speakers in Ukraine from "genocide." Instead, they flock to Ukrainian-language classes and embrace multi-ethnic Ukrainian identity

Until a few years ago, it seemed normal to hear the Ukrainian and Russian languages used interchangeably in Ukraine. For example, a TV interviewer might pose a question in Ukrainian, the interviewee responds in Russian, and they understand each other, as in this May 2023 interview in Odesa https://www.youtube[.]com/watch?v=9_PDOk82Gr8&t=944s). No big deal, right?

However, as historian Timothy Snyder pointed out, the coexistence of two languages reflects the colonial relationship between Russia and Ukraine; the colonized population has to learn the colonizer’s language, but not vice versa. Ukrainians under the Russian and Soviet empires needed to become bilingual in order to advance their careers; Russians denigrated the Ukrainian language as an uncultured peasant dialect. Now, during open war, bilingualism gives Ukrainians an edge. They can understand the language of the Russian aggressors, but Russians cannot understand them when they speak Ukrainian. Bilingualism also gives Ukrainians room for creative word-play, historian Snyder notes. 

In the thirty years since independence, Ukraine has enacted laws to require use of the Ukrainian language in official settings and to “de-Sovietize” Ukrainian culture. Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that such policies constitute “genocide” against Russian-speakers there, in an attempt to justify Russian aggression against Ukraine. As historian Snyder pointed out, “Ukraine is a bilingual country with a tolerance around language that is extremely rare.  Russian speakers in Ukraine are more free in every respect than are Russian speakers in Russia.”

Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 changed the formerly easy interplay between languages. A Ukrainian soldier, interviewed in late July while on a short leave in Odesa, said he heard many people speaking Russian there, and he found it “triggering,” a term that refers to setting off traumatic memories or emotions. Ukrainians who now live in the US have shared similar experiences with the Natto Team. One young Ukrainian woman, who hid out in basements in Russian-besieged Mariupol before escaping that city, says that hearing the Russian language brings up feelings of tension and fear. Nevertheless, she still speaks Russian with her elderly parents because it is something familiar to them in a world turned upside down. Another person, who spoke mostly Russian in childhood but increasingly chose to speak Ukrainian as she grew up, says that hearing the Russian language activates a “fight-or-flight” response in her. A third person came from western Ukraine and grew up speaking Ukrainian. At work in the US now, she feels vulnerable when encountering Russians; "every time I hear Russian language I hide my name tag and try to speak English without accent....I simply don’t feel safe in those situations."

Public sentiment in Ukraine increasingly turns against the Russian language. Many Ukrainians who grew up speaking Russian are flocking to Ukrainian-language classes. The Washington Post, commenting on this trend, noted the irony that Putin’s supposed attempt to protect Russian-speakers in Ukraine has instead alienated them: “The repudiation of the Russian language in Ukraine is a stark failing of Putin's invasion, shattering the notion that he will unite historic ‘Russian lands’." Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky recently signed laws banning place names that honor Russian figures and requiring knowledge of Ukrainian language and history for citizenship. 

However, attitudes toward language are complex. President Zelensky recently vetoed a separate law the would have banned the import of literature from Russia and Belarus, saying it violated EU norms on minority rights. In another sign of nuanced attitudes toward language, Volodymyr Kulyk, a scholar of Ukrainian identity, found in late-2022 surveys that the percentage of Ukrainians speaking Ukrainian as their “main everyday language” had grown from just over 40% in 2012 to just under 60% in 2022, but that many people said they speak both languages equally. He found the percentage using Ukrainian as their “language of convenience” had grown from about 45% in 2012 to about 85% in 2022. In addition, many Russian-speakers increasingly support the use and promotion of Ukrainian in public life, he said (https://www.youtube[.]com/watch?v=r_95xv2UeKA&t=2s).

Conflict researchers from George Mason University—while acknowledging the challenges of doing survey research during wartime—found similar support for an inclusive civic, rather than purely ethnic, definition of Ukrainian identity in an April 2023 survey of Ukrainians who formerly or currently live in areas bordering Russia; over 90% agreed that “being a good citizen of Ukraine meant respecting the different cultures and ethnicities of citizens” and showing “loyalty to Ukraine independent of ethnicity, language, and culture.”